Research Publications (Food Safety)

Cereals represent a widely consumed food commodity that might be contaminated by mycotoxins, resulting not only in potential consumer health risks upon dietary exposure but also significant financial losses due to contaminated batch disposal. Thus, continuous improvement of the performance characteristics of methods to enable an effective monitoring of such contaminants in food supply is highly needed.

Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) is widely used in the routine screening of mycotoxin contamination in various agricultural and food products. Herein, a cascade-amplifying system was introduced to dramatically promote the sensitivity of an immunoassay for ochratoxin A (OTA) detection.

The cytolethal distending toxin (CDT), Haemophilus ducreyi, is one of the bacterial toxins that have recently been considered for targeted therapies, especially in cancer therapies. CDT is an A-B2 exotoxin. Its catalytic subunit (CdtB) is capable of inducing DNA double strand breaks, cell cycle arrest and apoptosis in host eukaryotic cells. The sequence alignment indicates that the CdtB is structurally homologyr to phosphatases and deoxyribonucleases I (DNase I).

The current routine laboratory practices to investigate food samples in case of foodborne outbreaks still rely on attempts to isolate the pathogen in order to characterize it. We present in this study a proof of concept using Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli spiked food samples for a strain-level metagenomics foodborne outbreak investigation method using the MinION and Flongle flow cells from Oxford Nanopore Technologies, and we compared this to Illumina short-read-based metagenomics.

Oregano essential oil (OEO), as a natural antimicrobial, has gained increased interest from food researchers and manufacturers. However, a few studies have investigated its possible antibacterial effects against Staphylococcus aureus using the proteomic tool. The present study aimed to explore the antibacterial effect and mechanism of a carvacrol-rich OEO extracted from Origanum vulgare “Hot & Spicy” on the inactivation of S. aureus.

Escherichia coli (E. coli) ST1193 is an emerging fluoroquinolones-resistant and virulent lineage. Large gaps remain in our understanding of the evolutionary processes and differences of this lineage. Therefore, we used 76 E. coli ST1193 genomes to detect strain-level genetic diversity and phylogeny of this lineage globally. All E. coli ST1193 possessed fimH64, filCH5, and fumC14. There was 94.7% of isolates classified as O-type O75. There was 9.33% of E.

Arsenic (As) bioavailability in the rice rhizosphere is influenced by many microbial interactions, particularly by metal-transforming functional groups at the root-soil interface. This study was conducted to examine As-transforming microbes and As-speciation in the rice rhizosphere compartments, in response to two different water management practices (continuous and intermittently flooded), established on fields with high to low soil-As concentration.

The prevailing pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 highlights the desperate need of alternative vaccine-platforms, which are safe, effective, and can be modified to carry antigens of emerging pathogens. The current SARS-CoV-2 vaccines based on mRNA and adenoviral vector technology meet some of these criteria but still face limitations regarding administration route, mass production, stability, and storage.

Milk is easy to be contaminated by microorganisms due to its abundant nutrients. In this study, a 360-degree radiation thermosonication (TS) system was developed and utilized for the inactivation of Staphylococcus aureus in milk. The 360-degree radiation TS system-induced inactivation kinetics of S. aureus was fitted best by the Weibull model compared with biphasic and linear models.

by Julie Haendiges, Gordon R. Davidson, James B. Pettengill, Elizabeth Reed, Padmini Ramachandran, Tyann Blessington, Jesse D. Miller, Nathan Anderson, Sam Myoda, Eric W. Brown, Jie Zheng, Rohan Tikekar, Maria Hoffmann Pistachios have been implicated in two salmonellosis outbreaks and multiple recalls in the U.S.

by Hiroyuki Jinnouchi, Kenichi Sakakura, Tomonobu Yanase, Yusuke Ugata, Takunori Tsukui, Yosuke Taniguchi, Kei Yamamoto, Masaru Seguchi, Hiroshi Wada, Hideo Fujita

Background

by Simote T. Foliaki, Brent Race, Katie Williams, Chase Baune, Bradley R. Groveman, Cathryn L. Haigh

W. E. Sander et al. Coxiella burnetii, the causative bacterium of the zoonotic disease Q fever, has been documented in many different species. We describe documented turtles that were PCR positive for C. burnetii from multiple locations in Illinois and Wisconsin, USA. Assessing the conservation implications, reservoir potential, and zoonotic risk requires further research.

by Kiran Kumar Bhukya, Bhima Bhukya

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative movement disorder characterized by the loss of nigrostriatal dopaminergic neurons. Mounting evidence suggests that Nrf2 is a promising target for neuroprotective interventions in PD. However, electrophilic chemical properties of the canonical Nrf2-based drugs cause irreversible alkylation of cysteine residues on cellular proteins resulting...

Author(s): AnaCaroline Rodrigues Portela, Juliana Merces Hernandez, Renato Silva Bandeira, Edivaldo Costa Sousa Junior, Taynah Cohen de Melo, Maria Silvia Sousa Lucena, Dielle Monteiro Teixeira, Jones Anderson Monteiro Siqueira, Yvone Benchimol Gabbay, Luciana Damascena Silva

Author(s): Hacer Sibel Karapınar, Ali Bilgiç

Author(s): Katherine Blackshaw, Jiadai Wu, Nicholas Proschogo, Justin Davies, Daniel Oldfield, Aaron Schindeler, Richard B Banati, Fariba Dehghani, Peter Valtchev

With the acquirement of antibiotic resistance, Shigella has resulted in multiple epidemics of shigellosis, an infectious diarrheal disease, causing thousands of deaths per year. Unfortunately, there are no licensed vaccines, primarily due to low or serotype-specific immunogenicity. Thus, conserved subunit vaccines utilizing recombinant invasion plasmid antigens (Ipa) have been explored as cross-protective vaccine candidates.

Harmful secondary metabolites produced by fungi, mycotoxins, are found worldwide in a multitude of products. Roquefortine C (ROQ-C) is a mycotoxin produced by Penicillium roqueforti, the major fungus used to ripen blue-veined cheeses. To facilitate the screening of cheeses for ROQ-C, a method based upon the ambient ionization technique of direct analysis in real time-mass spectrometry (DART-MS) was developed.

Maize expressing Cry1Ab insecticidal toxin (Bt maize) is an effective method to control Sesamia nonagrioides and Ostrinia nubilalis, the most damaging corn borers of southern Europe. In this area, maize is prone to Fusarium infections, which can produce mycotoxins that pose a serious risk to human and animal health, causing significant economic losses in the agrifood industry.

The multiple-stress effects on plant physiology and gene expression are being intensively studied lately, primarily in model plants such as Arabidopsis, where the effects of six stressors have simultaneously been documented. In maize, double and triple stress responses are obtaining more attention, such as simultaneous drought and heat or heavy metal exposure, or drought in combination with insect and fungal infestation.

Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety, EarlyView. Systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted to quantify the effects of processing stages and interventions on the prevalence and concentration of Campylobacter on broiler carcasses.

Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety, EarlyView. Mycotoxin contamination in foods has posed serious threat to public health and raised worldwide concern. The development of simple, rapid, facile, and cost-effective methods for mycotoxin detection is of urgent need.

Olives from the Sigoise, Verdale, and Sevillana cultivars were elaborated as Spanish-style table olives by four Algerian factories, and the quality and food safety of the industrial table olives have been studied by the analysis of physicochemical and microbiological parameters.